Steve Valentine (Crossing Jordan) was able to use his mysterious magic skills honed while working at the Magic Castle in Hollywood when he became host of the US SCI FI Channel's new reality series Estate of Panic.
Valentine and executive producer Richard Hall, son of Let's Make a Deal host Monty Hall, spoke in a telephone interview about some of the secrets of the house where seven contestants are pitted against each other to earn cash. Following is an edited version of that conversation.
Why do you think people deserve to be scared about winning money?
Valentine: Well, you know, I think part of this is extreme, and it's fun, and people like to be challenged. But I also think that part of this show is just to see how far people will go in order to win money. And on our show, they go pretty far. I mean, I know, there's nothing that they won't do in order to get the cash. ... And it's tricky because it looks easy.
Why did you decide to be a part of it?
Valentine: I love to perform. This was a chance to get in touch with the sadistic side of my personality, I think, and do it on camera, which can be quite thrilling. But when they described what the show was like--when they told me what they were planning to do, and it's such an ambitious show--I thought this is something I really want to be part of. And I think for me, the tough part at the beginning was not feeling so guilty every time I sent people into one of these rooms, because I knew what they were about to face, you know? But I got over that pretty quickly.
Is the fact that Monty Hall is your father a natural transition for you as a game show/reality show producer?
Hall: Maybe. You know, the competitive reality genre is sort of the game show taken to locations. I started on The Amazing Race and have been working in competitive reality since. Yeah, it gave me more to talk about with my dad, you know, and his colleagues from the sets. It's a competitive show. It has all these elements. The money was certainly part of it.
Who is in charge of wrangling all of the vermin?
Hall: We have a wrangler company that works in particular with all of the odd, you know, mammals, insects, reptile requests that we would need. And it's a regular business. And we certainly relied on them quite a bit and had some fun making sure we didn't lose any. The animal selections are vetted by the corporations, [SCI FI Channel]. Everything is discussed in advance. And if there are any questions about any of the animals, we have to do further diligence to make sure that we're not getting the yellow-spotted spiders that have biting ability as opposed to the black ones. And then the wrangler companies themselves always have to demonstrate for us that any creature that they're bringing in is harmless or it looks scary, but is actually harmless. In some cases, even though something might be able to bite, there's nothing in the bite. So I think a lot of the fear with these animals is there's so many different kinds of things that you think are dangerous that it's easy to use one that's not particularly dangerous but can be scary nonetheless.
Tell us about the mansion where this is set?
Hall: It's an actual estate, and to the extent that we could, we shot as much as possible on the grounds of the estate. There were other times when we had to move into a studio to replicate the estate. It's a historical estate belonging to a family. And they were good-humored and generous with what we were doing. It was a fantastic location for usto work with.
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Estate of Panic host Steve Valentine
Valentine: It was the most amazing home. You don't get to full scale of this house until you're standing right next to it. The scope of the challenges are so ambitious and huge that we couldn't really destroy that person's house, so we had to move into a studio. But as far as the contestants were concerned, it was a house.
Tell us about the diversity of the people on the show?
Valentine: We had a lot of diversity. We had, like, a soccer mom and a grandmother. One lady that owned a winery.
Hall: Yeah, one lady with a winery. We had younger guys who were just kind of looking for what they were going to do after college. We had a bouncer from a nightclub. We had executive people, managers.
Valentine: That one guy who was the ex-gang member.
Hall: Right. Yeah, who now works in youth programs.
Valentine: He was scary though.
-Mike Szymanski
